Short tip: Manage cloned systems with SUSE Manager

It is a common procedure to use templates (“golden images“) when deploying virtual machines. Recently I had an issue when deploying SLES machines – newly registered systems within SUSE Manager replaced older one. The management agent was installed within the template.

For classic systems (registered via RHNSD and OSAD) it is sufficient to remove the following files:

# rm /etc/sysconfig/rhn/{osad-auth.conf,systemid}

On Salt systems, the following file needs to be removed:

# rm /etc/salt/minion_id

In my case, this step was not sufficient as an unique installation number is generated during the installation. This number is used when the system is registered within SUSE Manage – so ensure to re-create this identifier: